My Pet Serial Killer reviewed at The Fanzine

My Pet Serial Killer was recently reviewed at the Fanzine by none other than Kory Calico. I’ve lifted a few bits and pieces from the review:

With My Pet Serial Killer, Seidlinger has written a book that functions, in equal parts, as crime novel, meditation on the American thriller film aesthetic, and sly critique of intimacy and romance in the 21st century. Seidlinger creates a world where we are privy to a bevy of emotional stimuli: sensual text messages bounced through smart phones; courtships built around social media or in the clandestine recesses of darkened night clubs; the bubbly lift of designer drugs at the onset of an intimate encounter; the quick, sterile death as a substitute for sexual fulfillment; the joy attained after a blinking cursor in a chat room morphs into a message from a potential mate; the heartache of witnessing the total control of a person through the threat of harm as they inflict irreparable harm on another. These images mingle and converge unpredictably; Seidlinger crafts a landscape that can only be navigated viscerally, if at all.

On the optional-italicized sections of the novel:

These passages sprout throughout the book, part of the inner narrative that shimmies around the main storyline of Claire and her Gentleman Killer. They possess a lyric quality, addressing an unseen audience, and serve as part slasher flick aside, part backbone to the meat that comprises the greater story of the novel.

And:

The lines between master and pet are blurred, erased, and sewn together––what remains is an altogether different animal. Michael J. Seidlinger has written a book that warps and upends human desire, taking it to places that defy categorization, until all that is left is mystery. And within the pages of My Pet Serial Killer, mystery is the only thing that is ever certain.